The five-season, seven-year-long journey of The Boys concluded with season five, episode eight, “Blood and Bone.” The episode opened with The Boys eulogizing Frenchie, followed by Sage bringing out Kimiko’s new Soldier Boy power by enraging her. The Boys then head to the White House, where Homelander plans to address the nation and claim his divinity. They encounter traps, but are saved thanks to a change of heart from Ashley, and the Boys continue on to interrupt Homelander’s increasingly insane address to the nation. From there, Annie fights the Deep, Mother’s Milk and Hughie fight Oh Father, and Homelander is left to Butcher and Kimiko. After Kimiko successfully depowers Homelander, Butcher slices his brain out with the crowbar. Once the dust has settled, Butcher discovers that Terror has died and carries on with his plan to use the Supe virus. He’s stopped by Hughie in Vought Tower, who reluctantly kills him. Finally, the remaining Boys are set to live happy lives, with Kimiko in France, M.M. married, and Hughie and Annie expecting a baby.
Being the finale, “Blood and Bone” was one of, if not the most important, episodes in the entire show. Many climactic moments were successful, though some of the episode’s drawbacks stemmed from the buildup in earlier episodes. Observing the season as a whole, it is a sad truth that many viewers, especially those watching since 2019, have outgrown the show. This dissonance has persisted throughout many of these past seasons, and the final episodes do not feel appropriately heavy. Some fans, as they prepare to part with characters they’ve watched for nearly a decade, will encounter dissonance when the show seems to relentlessly prioritize easy, vulgar jokes and hollow, shock-value gore. While some of these instances could boil down to individual taste, much of the show’s prioritization of vulgarity has led to every character talking the same, cutting the tension in tense scenes with easy, edgy jokes. Of course, vulgarity has always been a part of The Boys and even worked well in this episode with Oh Father’s ball gag, and the Deep dying by a tentacle up the mouth. The weakness of this episode, though, came out in the periods of downtime, where the characters who have become thinner since the pilot either quip or retread the same arguments they’ve been having forever.
“Blood and Bones” has many successful moments, namely the time between Homelander’s de-powering and death. Additionally, Annie’s final confrontation with the Deep worked well, and the episode’s ultimate climax with Hughie and Butcher was the highlight of the season. On the flipside, these moments felt so successful due to their inevitability and, within that inevitability, played out very heavy-handedly and predictably, such as Butch literally seeing Lenny when he looks at Hughie. Ultimately, this episode felt mostly like a television episode that just happened to be the finale of a five-season show, delivering only where it counted. Simply put, while “Blood and Bones” is the best episode of season five, it is hardly the best episode of The Boys, which unfortunately makes it somewhat disappointing as the conclusion to one of the most popular modern television shows.
Rating: 6/10